Getting the Stuff Out

Wednesday night, I went to my den and living room and looked for 5 things from each room to give to the Kidney Foundation Drive. I did find 10 things. I found about 15. This was basically unplanned clearing of stuff that worked better than expected. I do not know where this will lead, but I am very happy about the direction.

The winter months are a little more difficult for me because of my lack of central heat. I am working on baking more which actually keeps the kitchen warmer which in turn keeps it cleaner, cuz I will stay there longer. The bedroom is just fine and the space heater in the den is good and I have the new space heater in the bathroom which is good as well. The closet room feels like a deep freeze, but that's okay with me.

I am working on using my space more effectively. This is very difficult for me for some reason. It goes along with my difficulty of finding a home for everything. Both of these things motivate me to move forward in may getting rid of stuff. My wish is that once a lot of this stuff is gone, homes will spring into view for the remaining items.

I find that I can clean out an area, drawer or pantry and then a few weeks later clean it out again. On the second go round I suddenly see new things that I no longer need. These things were there the first time, but for some reason my subconcious can deal with reducing only so much stuff at a time. It's okay. It's slow going, but it is going and that is for the good.

I went over to help a friend clean up her stuff a few weeks ago. She had gotten to that "can't see the floor" place in her bedroom. We worked for two days and, yes, the carpet was still there. Basically this was a "home for everything" issue, with some junk mail and store receipts thrown in. I was in such empathy with her tho. It seems like life is so full and the time to decide where everything should go is overlooked and then it just snowballs. I do it, I do it all the time. At one point she said that she should be embarrassed by me seeing her mess, but she wasn't (good to have friends like this) and I told her that if she started feeling embarrassed then we could just go to my house and do the same thing in my places where the hurricane hits and she would feel all better.

My 2010 goal will be to remove "places of the hurricane" from my house. I almost have this accomplished, but there are always set backs and I want 2010 to be the year the "set backs" are set back, here at Powell Cottage.